


Enough

by likelike_love



Category: In Plain Sight
Genre: Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:45:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likelike_love/pseuds/likelike_love
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A witness' miscarriage leads Mary and Marshall to a personal discussion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This story is angsty with a capital A. papillongirl, pipisafoat, and 31stcentury were infinitely patient while I flailed about with it.
> 
> [Originally posted](http://mary-marshall.livejournal.com/414518.html) on mary_marshall.livejournal.com on July 27, 2010 as a part of the 1st Annual 12 Days of Christmas (In July) event.

"This is the hardest story that I have ever told..." - _Happy Ending_ , Mika

Celia wasn't answering the phone. Normally, Mary would chalk that up to someone being busy, but Celia was holed up in a motel for the second consecutive day of her stay in Albuquerque. She was new to the program and bereft of everything and everyone she had known in her previous life. She knew no one, could go nowhere ... aside from reading the paperbacks she and Marshall had dropped by yesterday or watching cruddy Saturday afternoon television, Celia could only be sleeping. The fact that she didn't pick up the room phone any of the four times Mary had called in the last hour was worrisome. She turned to her left and regarded Marshall, who was finishing up a call of his own. "Well?"

"Security detail says no one has been in or out since we left last night."

She didn't wait for him to finish before grabbing her jacket off the back of her chair and snatching her keys off the desk. He was at the elevator beside her in seven long strides.

"Maybe she's a deep sleeper?" The look on his face was passive, but his hand folded firmly over Mary's, stopping her from jamming the elevator call button for the fourteenth time.

"Maybe."

Mary was distracted, thinking back over her interactions with Celia thus far, wondering what she might have missed. Celia was 26, with brilliant blue eyes showcased behind the thick green rectangular frames of her trendy glasses. She was constantly pushing her chin-length wavy brown hair off her face. She looked every bit the art history grad student that she was ... or had been up until witnessing the mob-style execution of a biochemistry doctoral candidate in the stacks of University of Michigan humanities library less than one week ago.

She had been attentive during her intake, asked appropriate questions about the MOU. Celia had been estranged from her family for some time now, had been seeing a man in her building casually for the past four months. _"I'm done with that. I have everything I need."_ She had studied her hands, smiling to herself, as the inspectors left the room. Mary had thought she was an odd duck and remarked as much to Marshall. Marshall countered that perhaps she had adopted a powerfully simple Buddhist outlook on life. Mary had cut him off before he could elaborate.

Marshall drove. Mary sat forward in the bucket seat of the truck, cursing the traffic and urging Marshall to maneuver around it, using a string of unkind words. He had barely made the turn into the motel parking lot before Mary bailed out of the car while it was still in motion. He reached across the cab and grabbed a handful of her shirt while he slammed on the brakes. She wrenched free of his grip and was off and running before he could rip the key from the ignition. "Goddammit, Mary," he muttered, taking the stairs two at a time to catch up.

They paused outside the door, listening. Mary knocked and called Celia's name, once. Then again. They drew their weapons, and Marshall lowered his shoulder and took two steps before making contact with the door, forcing the deadbolt through the casing and stumbling over the threshold. Mary pushed past him, surveying the room. Two double beds, one with the bedclothes messily rearranged, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. No signs of a struggle. She made her way to the bathroom and forced the door open. "Celia?"

Celia stood silent, legs apart, with her pants around her ankles, face contorted, maroon blood laced with clots trailing down her thighs in thick rivulets. Her open hand was extended, dripping red on the tile floor of the motel bathroom.

Mary holstered her gun and rushed to her side, shouting for Marshall to stay where he was. She slammed the toilet closed roughly, but her hands were gentle and reassuring as she helped Celia ease down onto the lid. Maybe it was the sound of the lid echoing through the room. Maybe it was the weight of Mary's hands on her shoulders. It almost didn't matter what it was, because _something_ caused the fragile tether holding Celia together to snap, and she dissolved into heaving, ugly, wrenching sobs that volleyed back from the shower walls making a deafening chorus.

"Mary?" Marshall's voice was tense, shouting to be heard through the door.

"We're okay!" she called to him. She knelt in front of the toilet and repeated it again and again into Celia's hair as the girl continued to shatter in her arms. They stayed like that for several minutes, Mary holding Celia tightly and murmuring words of comfort as best she knew how and Celia clawing at Mary's sleeves, sounding as if the sobs were being ripped forcibly from her gut.

Mary turned on the tap, gathered all the towels from the counter and worked quickly and diligently to clean Celia off as best as she could. She called to Marshall to bring her duffel from the truck. His eyes widened when she met him at the door, blood streaked across the front of her shirt, her forearms. She shook her head once and tugged the bag from his resisting grip. She pried his other hand from the door frame before closing it sharply behind her. Returning to the toilet, she folded two washcloths into a pair of clean underwear, pulled them up Celia's legs. The underpants were followed by pajama bottoms. Mary's hands were beneath Celia's armpits, gently urging her to her feet so she could finish pulling up the pants and tie the drawstring at her waist.

Marshall sprang back when he felt the doorknob turn in his hand. Celia's face was pale and her eyes fixed forward blankly as Mary propelled her from behind with a supportive hand on her shoulder and another at her waist. Marshall stepped into the bathroom to retrieve the duffel. He blinked twice and took in the bloody scene before him before he let out a shaky breath and closed the door.

The ride to the hospital was silent but for the sound of Celia's sobs, muffled by Mary's lap. Marshall flicked his gaze to the rearview compulsively, but Mary steadfastly refused to meet his eyes. Instead she stared out the window, absently petting Celia's hair with with her left hand. When Marshall pulled the truck up to the emergency room entrance, Mary was gently urging Celia to a sitting position. Marshall watched from the driver's seat while Mary towed her by the hand to the registration desk before he shifted back into drive and circled the lot once to park the vehicle.

By the time Marshall was allowed back to the curtain area nearly three hours later, Mary’s jacket draped across his forearm, Celia had been sedated. A blonde doctor spoke quietly outside the curtain, informing Marshall that based on her last menstrual period, Celia had likely been seven weeks pregnant. Based upon her physical exam and the results of her ultrasound, it appeared to have been a complete miscarriage. They would keep her overnight for observation. The doctor placed a hand on his arm, trying to comfort him with the news that 15-20% of all pregnancies ended this way. Marshall focused on the mole just above the corner of her mouth until she stopped speaking and eventually walked away.

When he pulled the curtain back, Mary was leaning against the wall at the head of the bed, one arm reaching over the siderail to stroke Celia’s hair, the other wrapped tightly across her own blood-stained abdomen. His voice did not startle her when he told her that Stan had arranged for a security detail outside Celia’s room at all times. When he held out her jacket to her, she shook her head until he gestured to her stomach. She let him help ease it up her arms onto her shoulders and tug the zipper up past her breasts.

Marshall drove them both back to his place. He didn't ask, and she did not protest. Mary slipped off her shoes and shrugged out of her jacket in the entryway. Leaving Marshall in the foyer, she made her way upstairs to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She shed the rest of her clothes while leaning up against the door. She stood motionless under the scalding spray for a full ten minutes before she reached out for Marshall's grapefruit shampoo. There was soft knock at the door, and Marshall entered the room. He placed a towel and some clothes on the counter for her and gathered her bloodstained clothes from the tile.

"I'll be right out." Her voice sounded strange behind the curtain.

Marshall told her to take her time and closed the door gently behind him. It was another 40 minutes before she exited the bathroom wearing the drawstring pajama pants and UNM sweatshirt he'd left on the counter, sleeves and pantlegs rolled up. Even after yanking them into place, his wool socks slipped down her calves and pooled around her ankles. She padded down the stairs and glanced around, looking for Marshall. He wasn't in the fastidiously neat living room or the Spanish-tiled kitchen. She ran her hand idly along the edge of the countertop on her way to the screen door.

Marshall handed her a generous pour of whiskey as she joined him on the back porch swing. She swirled the amber liquid in her glass, holding it up a little above eye level before downing it in a single pull. Marshall sipped at his drink, then let the glass dangle low from his fingertips, hanging his hand over the arm of the swing.

"You want to talk about today?"

"No." She drew one foot up onto the swing and folded it beneath her.

The ice cubes tinkled in his glass. He opened his mouth as if to speak.

"Why?” she snapped. “Because I'm a woman?" Fury bubbled behind the words, propelling them from her mouth before she knew what was happening. A shock of surprise flashed in the back her mind, but she reverted to her default mode, anger.

Marshall took a breath before he spoke. "Because you're a person, and none of what happened today would sit well with anyone. What? I'm a man, so I can't feel anything? Fuck you, Mary. Things can hurt me. _You_ can hurt me ... you do."

They sat with the darkness filling in the space their silence cleared. Stars appeared in the growing dusk, one at a time. Mary drew her other foot up beneath her, curling herself tight into the arm of the swing. She looked out over the lawn, taking in the lacy outline of the hawthorn tree, the garden shed, the tall hedge at the property line. She squinted her eyes slightly, refusing to surrender any detail to the gathering dim.

"I was pregnant once. I was 16, he was ... older. I was stupid. I found out I was pregnant and saw it as this great opportunity to break free from this life I'd been saddled with, my mom, Brandi ... I was going to break free and I was going to start over. And my life was going to be different. I ran away. Got married at the courthouse. He worked construction. We had a dingy apartment in Jersey City.”

She picked at the cuffs of the sweatshirt, pulling a stray thread until it snapped. 

“I was sick all the time. It was like she was trying to escape through my esophagus. Every time I threw up, I expected there to be a fetus swimming the backstroke in the bowl, looking up at me and flipping the bird. I was terrified. And he was angry. I wished ... I wished it would all be over. We had no idea what we were playing at. It was a mistake, a mistake ... a mistake."

Marshall wouldn't chance to look at her. He was afraid to interrupt her, to stop her, to derail this train, to recork this bottle of words that poured forth. Instead he watched her make a tight fist with her left hand, tracing her white knuckles with her right index finger. The nail had been gnawed down nearly to the quick. Marshall pushed back gingerly on his heels, easing the swing back gently, almost imperceptibly.

"Every night, my last thought before dropping to sleep was to wish that it would all be undone. And I wished her away."

He eased the swing forward again. She tore her cuticles until they bled.

"The pain was hot. It was sharp, like a knot tightening low in my belly and there was blood, blood like today, but not enough to wash her out of me. I went to the hospital, and it was finished. She was gone, and I shook the rest away."

She did not turn to face him. When she held out her glass, he refilled it without speaking. There was nothing to say. He did not touch her; she could not abide that now, he knew. 

Headlights appeared through the hedge as a car pulled up the driveway and around the house next door. They cut out, and the engine died. When the car door slammed, dogs barked a few times before the back door closed. At once, the night felt exceedingly close - the only remaining sounds were the faint creaking of the porch swing and a light breeze through the trees. 

Marshall laid his hand flat on the empty space between them. Mary could feel him vibrating with the effort required to keep from closing the distance. She did not know if she could ever be all right, could not imagine what that would feel like, but he would be there regardless. And that was enough. In that moment, it was enough.


End file.
